Ronald Dworkin

Ronald Myles Dworkin (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1931 – London, 2013) was an American legal philosopher and jurist, and a scholar of constitutional law. His theory of law is among the most influential contemporary accounts of what law is, and he ranks among the most cited legal scholars of the twentieth century. He worked in the analytic tradition and engaged constantly with legal positivism, which makes him a central figure in the debate over the relation between law and morality.

Dworkin studied philosophy at Harvard and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Magdalen College, Oxford. After taking his law degree at Harvard, he clerked for Judge Learned Hand and worked at a New York law firm. He joined Yale in 1962 and in 1969 was appointed to the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford, succeeding H. L. A. Hart. He later taught at University College London and New York University.

His first significant work, from 1969, criticised Hart's positivism for reducing law to rules and for failing to account for legal principles. In Taking Rights Seriously (1977) he developed that critique and argued for the "one right answer" thesis: a legal theory should justify the whole legal system coherently, so that judges are not left with unlimited discretion. In Law's Empire (1986) he presented law as integrity, the idea that judges should continue an existing legal practice much as co-authors continue a novel written by several hands. For Dworkin, individual rights act as trumps against majority goals, and the state must treat its citizens with equal concern.

In later decades he turned more openly to political philosophy and to progressive causes, addressing abortion and euthanasia in Life's Dominion (1993), civil liberties in Freedom's Law (1996) and equality in Sovereign Virtue (2000). He rejected a purely negative conception of liberty, arguing that freedom without the means to exercise it has little real worth. In his last years he criticised the counter-terrorism measures of the George W. Bush administration as contrary to the American Constitution.

His influence reaches across contemporary legal theory and political philosophy, and his work remains a key reference for those who debate the role of principles and morality in judicial decisions.